I have so many questions that they form a ball in my throat and not a single one can escape. I want to scream at him, rake my fingers down his cheeks and ask how he can talk about her with such fondness in his voice when he was the one who had her killed? But a bigger part of me doesn’t care, right in this moment, who he is or what he’s done. If he can tell me about my mother, then I’m willing to listen.
My family often uses the memory of what happened to my mother to invoke my wrath, but no one’s ever talked to me about her life. About who she was before she became a symbol of my family’s rage. All my life, the most I’ve gotten are whispers passed back and forth above my head like a hot potato no one wanted to be caught holding—fragments of sentences I craved like a drug: tragic, disgrace, heartbroken, gone, never coming back.
“How did you know her?” I ask, voice raw.
A chair scrapes back, making me jump. “I’ve had enough of this,” Mrs. Lattimer says, throwing her napkin down on the table as she stands. “It’s not bad enough that she’s the one he marries? But then she comes into my home and spews her father’s delusions and we’re expected to sit and listen?” She points at me. “I won’t—”
“Enough,” Bishop says. He doesn’t raise his voice, but his word is a warning just the same.
Mrs. Lattimer stares at her son, her lower lip trembling. “Two weeks?” she hisses. “That’s all it takes for her to turn you against us? Two weeks. ”
“No one’s against you, Mom. ” Bishop sounds weary, like he’s had some version of this conversation a thousand times before. Did he spend his childhood having to constantly prove his devotion to his mother instead of being the recipient of hers? Maybe he and I have something in common after all.
“Erin, please,” President Lattimer says, “sit down. There’s no need to make a scene. ”
But Mrs. Lattimer is not going to be easily consoled. “I’m not the one who made a scene,” she shoots back, eyes on me. She turns and leaves the room, her heels tapping a fading staccato rhythm on the wood floor of the hallway.
“Excuse me,” President Lattimer says. He doesn’t seem particularly ruffled by his wife’s behavior. He follows her from the room, and Bishop and I are left alone. I stare down at the chicken congealing on my plate. The candles in the middle of the table flicker and glow, casting shadows across my hands. The only sound is the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to say. And I am. Sorry I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Sorry I’m not the girl my sister and father need me to be.
“No need to apologize,” Bishop says. I turn to look at him, half his face in shadow. “I told you before, I want you to be yourself. That includes speaking your mind, even if it makes people uncomfortable. ”
I nod. “There was a man on our side of town. He lived a few houses down from us. ” I have no idea why I’m telling him this, maybe testing to see if he means what he says. Which is stupid and risky, but I can’t stop the flow of words. “A couple of winters ago, his son got sick. And the hospital wouldn’t give him medicine. ”
“There are protocols for the medicine,” Bishop says. “They don’t just hand it out. ” He is speaking like his father now, always with an answer for everything. I yank my hand off the table where it lays close to his. Bishop draws his hand back, too.
“I know that. But this man’s son was really sick, about-to-die sick. And they still put his name at the bottom of the list. So my neighbor stole some medicine, saved his son’s life. And your father had him put out for the crime. He froze to death on the other side of the fence, didn’t even make it one day. ” I hold Bishop’s gaze. “That’s your father’s idea of justice. Those are the kinds of choices he makes. ”
Bishop stares at me. “What do you want me to say, Ivy?” he asks finally. “That I agree with what my father did? That I don’t? What’s the answer you’re looking for?”
“I’m not looking for a specific answer,” I tell him, although the part of me that’s been coached to kill him hopes he agrees with his father. “I want to know what you think. ”
“I think,” Bishop says, “that we can love our families without trusting everything they tell us. Without championing everything they stand for. ” He delivers the words matter-of-factly, but his eyes are locked on mine. “I think that sometimes things aren’t as simple as our fathers want us to believe. ”
I have a pile of new books on my bedside table, but no matter which one I pick, I can’t seem to turn off my brain and settle down. It’s long past the time I usually turn out the light, and I will be cursing my inability to sleep come morning when it’s time for me to get up for work. Finally, I give up and climb out of bed. The hallway and living room are dark, and I tiptoe into the kitchen and grab a glass of water as quietly as I can. I’m sneaking back to the bedroom when Bishop shifts on the couch. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “You can’t, either?”
The room is dark, but a sliver of moonlight shines in through the not-quite-closed front window curtains. Bishop shakes his head, the light glinting off his cheekbones.
“I was just getting some water,” I say.
“Yeah. ” He smiles. “I can see that. ” He has one arm hooked behind his head, his sheet tangled at his feet. His pale T-shirt glows in the dim light. “Want to keep me company while you drink it?”
“Okay,” I say, starting toward one of the chairs across from him, but he bends his legs at the knee, making room for me on the end of the couch. “Thanks,” I say, sitting down, curling my legs up next to me.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Bishop says, breaking the silence before my mind can spin away from me, worrying about all the things I should be saying and doing.
“What?”
He gestures broadly. “This. Us. How only a couple of weeks ago we were just teenagers living with our parents and now we’re…here. ”
“Yes,” I say. “Very weird. ”
There’s a long pause where I can feel him watching me. I turn my head and look at him. “Remember the day we went to my house,” he says, “and got the books from my father’s library?”
“Yes. What about it?”